I currently have a DAS with over 3TB of music that I have built over the years. It’s all properly indexed and most have the album art. I access it through Roon. Right now Roon chokes when I boot the application. I need to detach the drive, let the app load and then connect the drive (WD My Book). I have a concern that the drive will destruct and I don’t have a back up. I also want to create a proper NAS solution here. Roon has some recommendations but they are several years out of date. Technology has changed somewhat. I will probably go QNAP. I’m interested in hearing what has worked for others and what I should implement in a NAS. Roon’s baseline is Intel iX, minimum 4 GB Ram, SSD for Roon OS, 2 drives in Raid 1, and last drive for Back Up.
I can’t help with the NAS questions but you should get a backup drive as soon as possible. In my experience, it’s not so much a question of whether a hard drive fill fail but when. I keep multiple back-ups. That can also help when individual files go bad–and that does happen.
I am using a QNAP TVS-471 with an SSD in slot 1 and three 6TB drives in slots 2 - 4 running in a RAID 5 configuration. The TVS-471 has an i3 processor. I run Roon server on the SSD and my library is 2900 albums and 34000 tracks. That’s about 1.8TB of music. It runs as smoothly as can be. If I was doing it all over I would have bought the TVS-671 to get the i5 processor to guard for the future but I can always go that way if the need arrises. It’s a costly solution but I did sell off an Aurender server when I discovered Roon because Roon handled the chores better than the Aurender in my opinion. One more thing, I also back my music up to a cloud service nightly in case something catastrophic were to happen to my NAS.
I recently merged two libraries and I ended up with this disproportionately large database. Even though I live in a large urban area, the size and configuration of NAS that I’m looking at is not in stock and I need to order it. I’ve put this off for a few weeks and I’m ready to move ASAP. If I don’t get some advice soon I’m just going to go ahead and build something that makes sense to me.
Your configuration is very similar to what I’m considering. Do you think that the difference between Celeron and Intel iX is that great? The QNAP TS-453B is celeron based. The ts-471 are i3 to get to i5 in need ts-671 with six bays. That’s a lot of space and cost.
Yes I think it makes a difference. The Roon recommendation is for an iX processor. Others are running their NAS units on Celerons but in my opinion somewhere down the line it’s going to cost them. You said you have 3TB of music. That’s a lot of music. I know its more money for the TVS-471 but it may be your best option given the amount of music you have. The real cost is in the drives anyway.
I decided to order the QNAP TS-453B and the PCIE card to run two NVME cache drives and to give me a 10GB ethernet port. Yes it’s going to have less horsepower but I’ll never stream 4K video from it and it’s really to be a music server/ backup for the house. The dual NVME drives with caching should perk the performance up to an acceptable level. Otherwise it will be on the marketplace and I’ll be wiser.
I’m not sure what your budget is but another route is to separate the ROON core from the NAS and go with a lower processor NAS. Larger HD’s are pretty cheap so one of the 2 bay QNAP or Synology units coupled with an outboard NUC or something from small green computer (or the like).
I can use the M.2 drives for caching and storage, if my research is correct. So I should be able to park Roon OS there. Otherwise Roon recommends a small SSD. I’ll have a spare slot and a small SSD is cheap. This whole set up is still far less money and far more versatile than the “Server” solutions from Audiophile companies.
I have no idea what you guys are talking about, and it sounds so terrifying I’ll leave you all to it.
I have a 24TB server, but that is mostly video. 3TB of music is hard for me to comprehend.
Hi,
I have a Synology NAS with 2x3TB drives for important data and a USB drive for my music.
I like the Synology solution (which is similar to the Q-Nap solutions) because it is an integrated system with a user-friendly interface, automated music/video/picture libraries and Android/IOs apps.
The synology apps help me streaming on network devices.
I use WD Red HDDs for all storage behause they are purpose-built for NAS systems.
I hope this helps you.
Best regards
Adrian
+1 for Synology. I have 2x6TB WD RED Pro for 2-3 years now and no problems at all. Before that I had also synology NAS but older and slower model. Good speeds ~100MB/s, regular software and security updates from Synology. Nice tools for offsite/cloud backup also.
I have both the Synology and QNAP units. It’s my opinion that the Synology software is superior to the QNAP but the QNAP hardware is better hands down. Now if only there was a QNAP with Synology software…
Thank you for that perspective. I have several Synology NAS units for different uses, and I have always been impressed with their software and continuous updates to the OS and Apps to make fixes and improvements. I have no experience with QNAP, but doing some checking yesterday, it became obvious that they have faster CPU options than Synology, which would be better for running Roon.
So, if you want to install and run Roon on a NAS, then it sounds like a QNAP would be better because of the better processing power. If you want to run Roon from a PC or laptop, then Synology should be fine for the music file storage, although I would recommend that you go with one of their Plus Series units for best performance.
I have no experience with the QNAP stuff but I will second the vote for the Synology software package. Their server apps are solid and the work to keep stuff updated well. The final gold star for them (for me) was that they recently added a very seamless background backup wizard for BOX that works great. I’m currently using the NAS in a DLNA/UPNp system so the processing power isn’t that big a deal.
I can recommend QNAP. They have a helpful hotline, too, getting remotely on your PC if needed.
Thanks for the useful advice. It was always either Synology or QNAP and I decided on QNAP.
I ordered the QNAP TS-453B and the QNAP PCIE card to run two NVME cache drives and to give me a 10GB ethernet port.
Mt configuration will give me two 500 GB Samsung NVME SSD Drives for Cache and a place to leave the Roon OS. The rotating drives are Western Digital Black 6 TB Drives in a Raid 1. I’ll be adding a third as an integrated backup. For now I have my music on the DAS that I will use for a back up.
WD Black drives are not NAS drives. You may have made an error there. You could have gone Red or Red Pro. Both of these are specified for NAS applications. Too late to change the order?
I did want the Gold Drives but our commercial supplier is almost out of WD Gold drives. They said that there may be product SKU change coming and that would explain almost no stock. Yes Gold is ideal for the NAS. They said that the speed is faster for the black and the warranty at 5 years is the same. When I said it was a light duty NAS they said it’s going to be fine. They also gave me a great price on them, so I was OK with the substitution.
One more try. The Black drives are desktop drives. They were not designed to be used in a NAS environment. The Gold and Red are NAS specific drives. They have built in TLER specific functionality for the NAS environment. There are other NAS specific functionality built in the NAS specific drives that make them ideal for a NAS environment and the Black drives are the wrong drive for this type application. Your supplier is giving you bad advice in order to sell drives. Everyone that answered you mentioned that they were using NAS drives. Look you can do what you like but so far most of the advice you have received has been ignored. Not sure at all why you bothered to ask at all.